'A Summer Night' is one of the masterpieces of English Aestheticism. Four female figures rest on a terrace overlooking a moonlit sea. They are each alike in character and form and shown in various stages of semi-undress.

Moore may have intended them to be viewed as a series of successive moments showing the same woman, a technique that could reflect the early development of sequential photography. He may have also been inspired by the famous Roman Portland Vase which shows women in a variety of poses and variously occupied. Moore would have seen the Vase in the British Museum when he entered London’s Royal Academy Schools in 1858.

A Summer Night | National Museums Liverpool

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'A Summer Night' is one of the masterpieces of English Aestheticism. Four female figures rest on a terrace overlooking a moonlit sea. They are each alike in character and form and shown in various stages of semi-undress. Moore may have intended them to be viewed as a series of successive moments showing the same woman, a technique that could reflect the early development of sequential photography. He may have also been inspired by the famous Roman Portland Vase which shows women in a variety of poses and variously occupied. Moore would have seen the Vase in the British Museum when he entered London’s Royal Academy Schools in 1858.

A Summer Night

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